Research has suggested that telehealth solutions can provide health care services that are cheaper than traditional face-to-face consultations, with similar results.

And the ease of teleconferencing allows some patients who have difficulty getting to the doctor to have regular communication with health care professionals, which improves outcomes.

But a new study takes telehealth one step further, into the realm of social media.

A social network developed for patients to communicate with health care professionals appears to have dramatically improved outcomes at one facility where it was tested.

Patients of the Bayada Home Health Care facility, in Moorestown, New Jersey, were being readmitted to hospital care at alarming rates following heart surgery.

The 40 percent readmission rate within 30 days of surgery was far above the 25 percent national average, reports Crain’s Chicago Business.

But during a three-month pilot of a social network, enTouch, developed by Prepared Health, readmission rates plummeted to 11 percent. Equally compelling, the rates rose to 40 percent again after the pilot ended.

The concept is relatively straightforward. The secure app allows patients to share their health status with health care providers, including home care workers and nurses.

The reasoning, explains Crain’s, is that voicemails and emails are more likely to be ignored or missed throughout the day than a status that pops up on your smartphone.

Read: A doctor's appointment at your desk

The company’s vision is to add patients’ family members to the platform, ideally creating an entire connected network of support for those who know and care for the patient––in both the emotional and medical sense.

“If you want to reach the patient and change behavior, you have to know who their support system is,” Ashish Shah, one of the co-founders of Prepared Health, told Crain’s.